When I applied to Brandeis, I applied because it met a set of criteria that I was pursuing: a respected liberal arts school, with a small student-to-professor ratio, academically strong in my areas of interest that regularly accepts students with my high school grade point average and course rigor. It was not very different from many of the other schools on my list, and it didn’t have to be. When I got my acceptance letter, I went on an overnight program on campus, as I did for most of the other colleges that accepted me. I liked my overnight at Brandeis the best, and on that criteria, chose to enroll.

It honestly wasn’t until the first day of First-Year Orientation that I learned that Brandeis was “a university with a strong commitment to social justice,” to quote an oft-used phrase in administrative press releases. Arguably the defining trait of Brandeis’ culture, the concept of “social justice” remained completely unknown to me until I was already here. That wasn’t a problem to me—social justice is a good cause, as the world has far too many oppressed people who deserve freedom and equal rights. But once the culture shock of Orientation wore off and Brandeis life proper began, this supposedly Brandeisian tug toward saving the world, toward the noble cause of social justice, became less and less noticeable. Everything fell into a predictable routine: classes, clubs, friends, sleep. Nowhere to be seen was the school’s all-important push toward equality.

A year after arriving at Brandeis, I still have absolutely no idea what it means to attend a university “committed to social justice.” Ask any student what Brandeis is about, and they’ll undoubtedly invoke the phrase. But ask them what “social justice” means, and you’ll get snickers, rolled eyes and shrugging shoulders. A teaching assistant once told me he thought “social justice” was some mineral which Brandeis secretly exports around the world. “It’s a conspiracy,” he joked, raising his eyebrows dramatically. 

One of the main issues seems to be that no one really knows what “social justice” means, or what we’re supposed to be doing to achieve it. It’s vague whether Brandeisian social justice is limited to the University, the community, the country or the world.

Those with a deep interest in social justice can take a number of classes exploring the concept in great detail, and even take up a minor specifically focused on it. But if this one phrase is the defining mark of what it means to be Brandeisian, shouldn’t it affect all students, including those who didn’t feel strongly about “social justice” before coming in? 

Shouldn’t we feel unified behind our need for “social justice,” instead of ridiculing the concept? Shouldn’t everyone from a Social Justice and Social Policy minor to a Computer Science major to a Theater major feel some connection? 

Even the Brandeis administration seems disconnected. On the University’s website, in the page titled “Defining Brandeis,” the phrase doesn’t appear even once. It does show up in the University’s mission statement, under a bullet point in the Diversity Statement, where the University claims to consider social justice “central to its mission as a non sectarian university founded by members of the American Jewish community.” This is the only place where “social justice,” the epicenter of the Brandeisian identity, appears in the document stating what our University is meant to accomplish. 

But certainly Brandeis wouldn’t call social justice “central to our mission” if it wasn’t a critical aspect of how the University at least conducts itself. Businessdictionary.com calls social justice “the fair and proper administration of laws conforming to the natural law that all persons, irrespective of ethnic origin, gender, possessions, race, religion, etc., are to be treated equally and without prejudice.” 

Does Brandeis follow this definition? Are we perceived as “socially just?” Regarding ethnic origin: College Factual ranks us number 463 in ethnic diversity nationwide. Regarding gender: U.S. News and World Reports cites our current gender breakdown at 57 percent female and 43 percent  male, a pretty equal split, but one that’s on par with peer universities. Regarding “possessions,” which we might take to mean socioeconomic class: Bloomberg Business Week ranks Brandeis as the 50th most expensive college in the nation at close to $54,000 per year including room and board. On the other hand, 82 percent of Brandeisians are on need-based financial aid, with an average package of about $31,000. The New York Times ranked us 21st in the nation for “economic diversity.” But some administrative practices, including an “early retirement” plan for staff over 60 last year and the layoffs and reduced wages in the Mailroom this year point to Brandeis not doing much to aid its lowest wage-earners. Regarding race: Half of Brandeis students are white, according to Forbes. Only four percent of Brandeisians are African-American, and only six percent are Hispanic. Finally, regarding religion: the public consciousness may not see Brandeis as the “social justice” university, but we are known as a heavily Jewish school. Hillel estimates 50 percent of our population is Jewish, giving us the largest Jewish population of any nonsectarian American college. 

On the whole, we aren’t an awfully unjust school—in most of these areas, we fall about average to most peer universities. But if “social justice” is our key defining factor, these only average statistics and practices suddenly fall far below acceptable. How can social justice be “central to our mission” if we are conducting ourselves like any other college would, filling diversity requirements and cutting employee salaries in favor of the bottom line? If, and this is a big “if,” we’re going to continue with this term, we need to take definitive action that lives up to it. 

That goes for students as well as administrators. Better business and enrollment practices will only happen if we, the student body, demand them. We were once a college where students took over a building and held themselves hostage until the administration met their demands for better racial diversity. 

That was a college where students truly cared about social justice, and knew how to accomplish it—through choosing specific goals to be accomplished, and finding specific means of protest to accomplish them. We weren’t absolutist—not all of the demands of the Ford Hall takeover were met, and several compromises were reached—but we weren’t pushovers either. We certainly weren’t armchair activists posting about social justice on Facebook, then never acting. If we can’t bring that school back, it might be time to rethink what it means to be Brandeisian.